He is seven now, and though his love for ballet has faded, Nutcracker still remains his most watched film. He goes to a jazz class with both boys and girls, and enjoys running around and rough and tumble play in the park. He doesn’t volunteer to braid our hair as often, but still makes the most astute observations about our change of hairstyle or dressing.

He is also the most sensitive and emotionally perceptive little boy I know. Being raised by parents who have never felt the need to raise their boys as ‘feminists’ or ‘footballers’, but simply left them free to explore the possibilities between those or any other categories, he is finding his own place in the world.

Gender bias is all over

Just as news of gender-based violence and discrimination bombards us in the most disturbing ways, so does a combative wave of protest against it, ensuring that a narrative of antidote also exists in parallel. For every objectifying statement made about women, one also hears its ‘liberating’ polar opposite. For each time a man commits violence against a woman, there is an exhortation to men everywhere to ‘man up’ to being respectful and sensitive.

But how do young minds make sense of these two extreme positions and arrive at the one they wish to live by? And how do parents find their own sense of balance between ‘politically correct’ and comfortable parenting around these sensitive issues?

Here are some things you can do in your day-to-day routine to sensitise your child about gender equality:

• Watch out for stereotypes. Have you ever told your son that he needs to ‘protect’ his sister because ‘she is a girl’ or told your daughter that she needs to help lay the table or serve the guests because she is a girl? Buying dolls for the girls and cars for the boys, or doing up their rooms in girly or boyish ways are stereotypic overloads children could do well without. Right from infancy, raise your children in an atmosphere of curiosity and freedom. Allow them to explore possibilities, identities and choices as they grow up, without them having to fear being judged.
• Subtle ways in which you may be creating a gender bias in your child. While narrating bedtime stories, be mindful to avoid gender stereotypes such as princesses in need of protection by the prince and the princess repaying the favour by marrying the prince. And let them pick up toys from both the ‘girls’ or ‘boys’ sections.
• Teach them to question gender roles in the world around them. Why do you think the character in this movie made that choice? What could be the consequences of such a choice, for themselves and others? Could there be another choice he/she could have made? The next time they express a wish to ‘keep the girls out of it’ or buy that blue Kinder Joy™ instead of the pink one, ask them why they want to make that choice, and help them see another perspective.
• Model it! Most of what children pick up comes from what they see around them. If they see their parents share chores in an atmosphere of understanding and fairness, the message they get is that this is how it is done. If your children notice that it’s normal for their father to shop for vegetables or cook a meal while their mother is comfortable with fixing a broken thing, it helps to dissolve gender biases in their mind.
• Make sure responsibilities are given keeping interests and abilities in mind, rather than being based on what girls or boys ‘ought’ to do. If your little girl enjoys cooking and baking, by all means encourage her to try her hand at it, and if your son is good with electronic repairs, let him enjoy the responsibility. But if your son enjoys playing with your daughter’s doll house don’t lose sleep over it. Let them know that they are free to experiment with the other role as and when they like.
• And finally, remember that promoting equality irrespective of gender, caste, skin colour or economic status, may be more important than promoting equality based on gender alone. Men and women are different, not necessarily equal in every way, just as no two people are or can be equal in every way. But that difference does not warrant discrimination. That is the message to focus on.

Among us are women who are great drivers and mountain climbers, men who are amazing chefs and have an impressive sense of design, and perhaps what allowed each of them to be all they wanted to be, is someone who believed in their worthiness as people, not as men or women. Let us raise our children in this spirit then, where we value them for who they are and not how well they fit into defined categories.

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Mummy, you are your daughter’s first role model

When a girl is born, the first woman who is close to her and the one she trusts with all her might is her mother. She watches her every move and imbibes whatever she sees, without filtering. How you treat yourself is exactly the way your daughter will learn to treat herself. If you are over critical about yourself or if you always have negative things to say about yourself, know that your daughter is mirroring herself in you.

I have a friend who is obsessed about her hair. No matter where she gets it groomed; it is never the way she wants it. To us, she has perfectly silky hair. I met her mother a few months ago and she too has the same issue. So, that is where the daughter inherited it from. You as a mother are her first scale to confidence, if you are okay with who you are, she will be too.

How you treat yourself is exactly the way your daughter will learn to treat herself

If your life is full of tiny lies that you speak to yourself every day, for sure, this is what your daughter will learn as well. And no woman has ever built self confidence with lies imbued within her system of values. With your lies, you are destroying her self-esteem bit by bit. If you have promised something, then keep it. If you could not, explain why.

Daddy, you are teaching your daughter all she will know about men

Daddy is the first man a daughter is close to. It is her first non-sexual close relationship. You are mapping the way she will deal with other men in the future. Treat her with love and care and she will learn to be with men who treat her same. Appreciate her; tell her she is beautiful, she will grow up with confidence.

If you are criticising her all the time or are cold to her, later in life she will take criticism or coldness from a man as the norm of any man-woman relationship. If you are violent, she will learn that violence is okay and acceptable in a relationship. If you love her and tell her so, she will grow up to be a woman with healthy self-esteem, walking tall in the world. Whatever you say to her when she is a child she will process it deep down within her and one day manifest it somehow in her life. Your approval and love will give her the sense of being worthy, or else she will run after people to give her that sense which often ends in disaster.

Research shows that a girl with a loving father who is involved in her upbringing, finishes school, performs better at work and is less likely to date an abusive man. If you are a dad, just love her and tell her so, that will take her places.

Treat her with love and care and she will learn to be with men who treat her same

Give her positive images

It’s no rocket science that self-esteem grows with positive images. At home, what are the images you portray in front of your child? Do you always have negative stories to discuss with your daughter, like the friend who hurt you, the relative you hate or even worse, do you criticise your spouse? If you do, you are already schooling your daughter with distrust and the belief that relationships hurt and are bad. When she grows up, no matter how far she goes, forming intimate relations would be a task for her. And no woman has been confident with a bagful of broken or hurt relationships.

The greatest blunder parents commit is to tell their daughter who she should not be. Rather, all that energy should be vested on ‘what she could be.’ With what ‘not-to-be’ you end up creating a confused child, but when you give her an image of what she can and should be, that boosts her self esteem because she will have clarity, and clarity always boosts self-esteem.

Let her find her skills

Every child has an area of interest where s/he has an advantage over others. Let your daughter find her skill. It might be a hobby class or a gardening session. Anything a child is good at boosts her self-esteem. Do not choose for her; let her find it for herself. It might be a trial and error method, but she will find it. That way she won’t fear making mistakes in the future and also won’t take a failure as personal defeat.

The greatest blunder parents commit is to tell their daughter who she should not be

When she is very young, keep her away from popular culture

If we see what popular culture has to offer, the women are most certainly objectified sexually. They are thin, fair and sexually alluring. These are the figures that basically do the rounds. A stereotypical kind of beauty is talked off. It seems that if a girl does not fall into a pattern, she is not beautiful. So, the best way to deal with the invasion of popular cultural values is to nurture her inner qualities and appreciate her for it.

Appreciate and cherish her

This is the golden rule of parenting. Appreciate your daughters. They will blossom. Keep away that criticising metre. With each word of criticism or mockery, you break a tiny part of your daughter, who blindly believes in what you say and creates a negative image for herself that might haunt her for a lifetime. The worst thing you can do is to brand her as ‘lazy, weak, sick, mad, stupid etc.’ With each word you affirm, you put that feeling of unworthiness in her. Later in life, that feeling may leave her, but not very easily. It reflects in her relationships and work place.

Children are not soldiers from destiny to fight your unfinished battles. They are gifts to be cherished. Cherish your daughter, have fun. Hug her a lot, tell her she is worth the world and more, and one day she will prove that she is.

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